Compared to previous quarters, the numbers only changed slightly. In 1Q 2010 Intel held 81.2%, while AMD reigned in at 18.1%. VIAs share rised slightly from 0.7% in 1Q 2010 to 0.9% in 1Q 2011. Note that due to rounding the numbers sum up to 100.1%. According to Mercury Reasearch, the numbers have been solid, but it needs to be considered that in 2011, the first quarter was one week longer than usual. As a consequence the second quarter will be shorter by a week which will likewise affect numbers a little bit. Other than that the prospect for second quarter 2011 is in line with seasonal expectations.

When looking at revenue, first quarter 2011 saw a rise of 1.1%. Usually a seasonal decline of 8.6% would be expected says the research firm. If the first quarter would be normalized to 13 weeks, a decline of 6.2% can be observed ? still better than usual. When looking at unit shipments, a 7.2% increase could be observed ? though again in a normalized quarter it would be down 0.4%. While desktop and notebook shipments were up, servers declined. The average selling price (ASP) for CPUs rose to $101 which is the highest figure since 2008.

Mercury Research analyst Dean McCarron remarks "This is the third quarter in a row of significantly below normal year-on-year growth," and continues "However, the decline in the yearly comparable growth appears to have stopped this quarter, hinting at a possible resumption of on-year growth in the coming quarters of 2011."

Both Intel and AMD started offering new products from the CES exhibition onwards. Intel expanded it’s notebook, desktop and entry-level server offerings by CPUs based on the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture as well as high-end servers refreshed previous generation chips. It should be noted that some of Intels sales could have been held back by the disastrous chipset bug which resulted in a temporary production stop and partial recall of products utilizing more than two SATA ports. The whole incident cost Intel $1 billion. AMD launched the entry-level models of their Fusion APU aimed at netbooks.